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When Macmillan talked about the wind of change, he was referring to the desire of African nations for their independence. But he might just as easily have been talking about education in England, where many concerns - about the extent of underprivilege, the need for a more child-centred style of education in primary schools, the unfairness of the selective tripartite system of secondary schools, and wider access to higher education - were now reaching a climax.
Tory education policy.
In his book The Making of Tory Education Policy in Post-War Britain 1950-1986 , Christopher Knight argues that in the period between 1950 and 1974 the Conservative Party failed to fashion an educational policy in line with Conservative philosophy (Knight 1990:3).

However, the beginnings of a Tory education policy can be seen, Knight suggests, in One Nation - A Tory Approach to Social Problems , published by the Conservative Political Centre in 1950. It was written by nine members of what became known as the One Nation group of Tory MPs, including Edward Heath, lain Macleod, Angus Maude and Enoch Powell, who were committed to preserving the church schools and the private sector, to defending the tripartite system, and to opposing what they saw as the enforced uniformity of comprehensive education.
In his contribution to One Nation , Maude wrote: The modern insistence on humanising teaching methods . must not be made an excuse for abandoning the traditional disciplines of learning . We deplore the present tendency to drag down the brighter children to the level of the dull ones (quoted in Knight 1990:12-13). It was perhaps unsurprising that the Tories should have spent little effort in developing a coherent education policy in the early 1950s because, when they regained power in 1951, the overwhelming need was for more school places to cope with the rapidly rising birth rate. Oversize classes (forty or more pupils) and inadequate buildings were the dominant issues for politicians, civil servants and parents alike . A wider vision of schooling was not yet developed